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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Oct 1, 2006

Hisashi Inoue: Crusader with a pen

So wide-ranging are 71-year-old Hisashi Inoue's talents and activities that it is difficult to know which to focus on at the expense of others.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 1, 2006

Age-old 'naked friendships' lay bare new bathhouse concerns

I do it about three times a week, but I tell you I would double that frequency if I could. It is surely one of life's great pleasures, and it takes on average (for me) 45 to 50 minutes. Some people smoke afterward, but I just like to cool down and think about things -- you know, life, the human body,...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 24, 2006

Japan's hordes of hoarders still look to their navel nest eggs

I have spent nearly 40 years writing about Japan, virtually all of the time trying to show how Japanese people are really no different from other nationalities. But, by God, there is one aspect of Japanese life that makes this country unique. I defy any reader to name a society that has a custom like...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 10, 2006

Out of the well, but into the fire

FROG IN THE WELL: Portraits of Japan by Watanabe Kazan 1793-1841, by Donald Keene. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 290 pp., including endnotes, bibliography, index and 38 color illustrations, £24.50 (cloth). Watanabe Kazan is not nearly as well known in Western countries as his contemporary...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 3, 2006

Controversial tales of cats, Pluto and Britney's belly

Controversy No. 1: Cats are people, too
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 2, 2006

Tyler Foundation helps other sick kids shine on

There are many pictures of Tyler Ferris on the Web site his mother, Kimberly Forsythe, created after his death just over a year ago. In every one he is smiling, if not grinning from ear to ear.
BUSINESS
Aug 1, 2006

Japan Post drafts 10-year plan

Japan Post Corp. submitted to the government on Monday outlines of its 10-year postal privatization road map that includes plans for its savings bank to provide loans to individuals and for its life insurance firm to offer health and casualty insurance policies.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jul 29, 2006

Deven Arora

In his book "A Yen for Yen," Deven Arora from India describes his life in Japan as a "rupees-to-riches success story." He has always, he said, followed six rules: being committed to a dream; believing in self; daring to try unconventional ideas; being unafraid of making mistakes; persevering; and enjoying...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 27, 2006

The revenge of the Red Demon

Playwright, actor and director Hideki Noda has been the undisputed leader of the Japanese contemporary theater world for 30 years. In that time he has written, directed and often acted in more than 60 plays in Japan -- all of them hits or superhits among his mushrooming fanbase. In fact, Noda has been...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 22, 2006

No such as thing as the average 'gaijin' in Japan

Charles Lent points out landmarks from the 31st floor of Tokyo Sankei Building in Otemachi with confidence and pride. After 13 years in Japan he knows more than a few.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 9, 2006

Classical Japanese text -- what is lost and found in translation

THE TALES OF THE HEIKE, translated by Burton Watson, edited with an introduction by Haruo Shirane, glossary and bibliographies compiled by Michael Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 216 pp., illustrated, $24.50 (cloth). The "Heike Monogatari," that famous account of the events that led...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 9, 2006

Home from home from home

Three days ago marked an anniversary of my own personal day of independence. Thirty years ago, on July 6, 1976, I became an Australian citizen and legally forfeited my U.S. citizenship.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 9, 2006

Swimming in the same sea

Oceans have always been an important part of many cultures, and today we understand the oceans more than we ever have in any part of human history. The question now is, has this knowledge and understanding led us to conserve and protect this beauty and resource and its inextricable links to human lives?...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 4, 2006

Pensive view of a city's declining identity

KYOTO: A Cultural and Literary History, by John Dougill. Signal Books, 2006, 242 pp., 2,500 yen (paper). "Everyone knew," the wartime narrator of Hisako Matsubara's Kyoto novel "Cranes at Dusk" relates, "there was not a single Japanese city of over a million people that hadn't already been bombed." But...
BUSINESS
May 24, 2006

Sompo facing partial suspension

The Financial Services Agency is set to partially suspend Sompo Japan Insurance Inc. from business for about a month over unlawful sales practices that surfaced earlier this year, FSA sources said Tuesday.
Japan Times
LIFE
May 14, 2006

Home and away

Young Japanese lead the way in a cultural exchange set to erode their homeland's hidebound mentality
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2006

Children of Lesotho orphaned by AIDS

MASERU, Lesotho -- If I had heard a sadder song, I could not remember.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 26, 2006

More seniors opting for personalized wills

It hardly seems likely a kit called "Let's Write Our Will" would be a best-seller, but since its debut last year it has been a hit with elderly people.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Apr 25, 2006

Toshie Kobayashi

Toshie Kobayashi, 76, has been working six days a week, since she was 14 years old. As a highly skilled typesetter, she made a good living until the 1980s, when digital systems replaced her and analog typesetting machines. At 54, she registered with a cleaning service, and ever since then she has been...
Japan Times
LIFE
Apr 23, 2006

Imelda Marcos: Still angry after all these years

The beautiful half of one of the 20th century's most notorious dictatorships, Imelda Marcos has spent two decades fighting attempts to jail her and trace a reputed fortune of billions. On the 20th anniversary of the revolution that ousted her and Ferdinand Marcos from power in the Philippines, she talks...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 18, 2006

Musical match for Japan Goliath

Tetsuo Tanaka has been protesting his dismissal from an electronics company for a quarter of a century. Now his struggle, one of the longest one-man campaigns in Japanese history, is to be the subject of a documentary
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 13, 2006

Lennon's love and peace legacy on display

To commemorate the wedding of John Lennon and Yoko Ono and their peace activities during the late 1960s, the John Lennon Museum in Japan is hosting a special exhibition until July 31 titled "John and Yoko's Love & Peace Activities 1968-1970."
Japan Times
Features
Apr 9, 2006

Off the road from Damascus

Megumi Yoshitake's experience of living with the Bedouin is quite probably unique. Although her primary medium is photography, here she also offers some written snippets of memory and expression from her numerous sojourns in the Syrian Desert since the 1980s.
Japan Times
Features
Apr 2, 2006

Taking tanka to a new and timeless plane

Machi Tawara made a spectacular debut as a tanka poet at the age of 25 in 1987, and since then the Osaka-born artist has devoted her life to condensing her world into those neat, rhythmic but not rhyming, 31-syllable compositions.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Mar 4, 2006

What would the village hugger do?

Eons ago in an America light-years away, my wife and I stopped at the only eatery available in a town that hit the bull's-eye in the middle of nowhere. As we ordered coffee and toast, an old man shuffling past suddenly stopped and spoke to my wife. She may have been the first Oriental he had ever seen....
LIFE / Language
Feb 28, 2006

To learn the Japanese language, get pod-agogical

With Internet blogs beginning to challenge traditional print media, it was only a matter of time before a new medium broke radio's traditional choke hold on free audio programming. Enter podcasts, the downloadable MP3 audio files that feature mixes of music and chatter created by amateurs worldwide....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 19, 2006

Decades of peace have yet to heal Vietnam's wounds

VIET NAM AT PEACE, by Philip Jones Griffiths. London: Trolley, 2005, 312 pp., £39.95 (cloth). This is the final volume in Philip Jones Griffiths' epoch trilogy on Vietnam spanning 40 years. His classic "Vietnam, Inc" (1971) and "Agent Orange" (2003) focus on war and its consequences. Here, we are given...

Longform

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